How long Snap ran the madman in view he never knew, but at last he lost him. Panting and tired, he pulled up; climbed first one knoll and then another, and still no sight of the man or of his own comrades. It was now so dark that he could hardly see the tracks in the snow; the forest a few yards from him was dim and indistinct, and every minute the darkness deepened. He shouted. His shout seemed hardly to travel further than his lips, it seemed so faint and feeble. It was for all the world like standing by the seashore and trying to cast a fly on the ocean. It fell at his feet. Again he cried, and this time an answer came, but such an answer! First a laugh, and then a wild eldritch screech. The boy was no coward, but a cold chill crept up to the very roots of his hair, and his heart froze and stood still at the sound. And, after all, it was only Shnena, the night owl, calling to her mate.
Being a level-headed and cool lad, Snap soon realised that he had outrun his friends, and that they had (thanks to the darkness) missed his trail and lost him. He had often read of lonely nights in the forest, and envied the heroes of the story, but somehow he did not care about the reality as much as he had expected. The typical 'leather-stocking,' he remembered, always had matches, made a fire and sometimes a bush shelter, lit a pipe, and ate pemmican. Now Snap felt that, though extremely hot now, he would soon be bitterly cold, but he had no matches, did not know how to build a shelter, had no pemmican, and did not smoke. As for that buffalo robe, of which so much is always made in dear old Fenimore Cooper's books, there might be one within a few miles, but if so its four-footed owner was probably still wearing it. Snap remembered that a trapper who had no matches rubbed bits of wood together until he had got a light by friction. This was a happy thought, and, taking out his knife, he carefully cut a couple of pieces of dry pine from a stump hard by, and then collected as big a bundle as possible of twigs and dead wood, which he deposited on a spot previously cleared of snow. Then he rubbed the wood, and rubbed the wood, and continued to rub the wood, but nothing came of it. Presently he tried a new piece; rub, rub, rub, he went, and a large drop of perspiration dropped off the tip of his nose with a little splash quite audible in the intense stillness. Then he gave it up, voted Fenimore Cooper a fraud, or at any rate came to the conclusion that his receipts for kindling fire were not sufficiently explicit.
For a time he sat still and listened. He has confided to a friend since that he could 'hear the silence.' Certainly he could hear nothing else, unless it were the sudden creaking of some old tree's bough weighted with too much snow. And then his thoughts went after the madman. A thought struck him, and even Snap never fancied that it was the cold alone which made his knees knock together and his teeth rattle so. What if, now that he was alone, the madman should turn the tables and hunt him? Was not that him he saw sneaking over the snow in the dim light of the rising moon? Snap sprang to his feet with a crackle, accounted for by the fact that part of his clothing had frozen to the log on which he had been sitting, and had elected to remain there. Snap put his hand ruefully behind him. It was very cold even with clothes, it would be colder without! However, as he rose the shadow moved rapidly away, taking the semblance of a dog to Snap's eyes as it went. By-and-by a long blood-curdling howl told the boy that the shadow he had seen was sitting somewhere not far off, complaining to the moon that the plump English lad wasn't half dead yet, and looked too big for one poor hungry wolf to tackle all alone. 'Confound these forests,' thought Snap, 'and all the brutes in them, their voices alone are enough to frighten a fellow,' and then he began to wonder if he would soon go to sleep and never wake any more, and hoped, if so, that Nares would find him and send a message home to Fairbury.
At any rate the boy thought, before going to sleep for the last time, he would keep up the practice he had observed all his life, and for a few minutes the hoary pine-trees and the cold, distant stars looked down on an English boy bending his knees to the only power in Heaven or earth to which it is no shame for the bravest and proudest to bend. Like a son to a father he prayed, just asking for what he wanted, and pretty confident that, if it would not be a bad thing for him, he would get it. When he rose to his feet the forest seemed to have put on a more friendly air, the trees didn't look so rigid and funereal, the stars were not so far off. Who knows, perhaps Nature, God's creation, had also heard the boy's prayer to their common Creator.
For hours and hours, it seemed to him, Snap tramped up and down, like a sentry on his beat, beneath the pine at whose foot lay his unlit fire. After a while he began to dream as he walked, for surely it was a dream! Somewhere not far off from him he could hear a human voice, and hear it moreover so distinctly that the words of the song it sang came clearly to his ears. Snap shook himself and pinched himself violently to be sure he was awake, and then stood still again to listen. Yes, there was no mistake at all about it.
Hush-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
crooned the voice, and its effect in the stillness of the night was to frighten Snap more even than Shnena or the wolf. Creeping in the direction from which the sound came, so stealthily that he did not even hear himself move, Snap got at last to a point from which he could see the strange singer. Crouching under a log sat the wretched lunatic, naked to his waist, his grey hair hanging in elf-locks over his eyes, and in his arms a bundle, wrapped round in his own coat and shirt, which the poor fellow rocked as a woman rocks her child, singing the while a snatch of a song which he had heard in happier days sung to his own little ones. There were tears in Snap's eyes as he looked, and he longed to go to the man's help, but he dared not. Alone he would have no strength to compel the lunatic to do what was reasonable, and to talk to him would be idle. At that moment the man looked up and sat listening like a wild beast who hears the hounds on his scent. 'They want to take you too, my darling,' he whispered, and Snap could hear every word as if it had been yelled into his ears, 'but they shan't, the devils! they shan't; we'll die together first!' Muttering and glancing back, the man crawled on hands and knees into the scrub and was gone. Snap rubbed his eyes; it seemed like a dream, so noiselessly did the madman creep away and disappear. As he stood, still staring at the place, Snap heard a bough crack behind him, then another and another, and the tread of men approaching in the snow. In another minute Nares had the boy by the hand, the weary night-watch was over, and a match inserted amongst the twigs sent up a bright flame as cheering as the voice of his friends. Having partially thawed, and eaten as much as he could, Snap told Nares and his two companions what he had just seen, and as morning was just breaking, and active exercise seemed the boy's best chance of ever getting warm again, the four once more took up the trail.
Stooping down over the tracks made by the maniac as he crawled into the scrub, Nares uttered an ejaculation of horror. 'Poor wretch,' he said, 'look at that,' and he pointed to a huge track, which looked half human, half animal, in its monstrous shapelessness. 'It's his hand, frost-bitten and as big as your head,' said Bromley; 'he can't go much further, I'm thinking.' But he did, and it was full day when the pursuers came out upon a bit of prairie and saw in front of them the broad flooded waters of the Thompson River, and a short distance ahead of them a miserable hunted man still staggering on with his load. As he saw him the child's father uttered a cry and dashed to the front. The madman heard it, looked back, and fled wildly towards the river. Madness uses up the life and strength rapidly, no doubt, but the wasting flame burns fiercely while it lasts, and this last effort of the frost-bitten dying man seemed likely to make pursuit hopeless. 'He is going for the river, heaven help the child!' gasped Nares. About four hundred yards before reaching the river, a broad but slow-running watercourse ran parallel to the Thompson. This was frozen over owing to its shallowness and the sluggishness of its waters. Even the Thompson had a thin fringe of ice on its edges. Without pausing, the madman dashed on to the ice of the stream, which swayed and broke beneath his weight. Crash, crash, he went through, first here, then there, but somehow, though the whole surface of the ice rocked, he struggled on hands and knees from one hole to the other, and reached the farther side in safety. But his troubles in crossing had given his pursuers time to close upon him, and as he gained the shore Snap saw the child's father draw a revolver with a curse and fire at his child's would-be murderer, for that the madman meant to plunge into the Thompson with his victim, and so elude his pursuers, seemed now beyond a doubt. For some reason, for which he could not account, Snap's sympathies were with the wretched madman, and without pausing to think he knocked up the Irishman's revolver before he could fire a second shot, and dashed on to the weak and broken ice. 'I never gave it time to let me in,' Snap explained afterwards, and, indeed, with his blood up as it had never been before, and strong with years of Fernhall training, the boy seemed to skim across the ice like a bird.
And now they were on the flat together, with the strong black river ahead. Death the penalty, the child's life the prize. If Snap's friends wished to, they could not get to him soon enough to save him, had the madman turned. Luckily for Snap, the hunted man never looked behind him, but naked, frost-bitten, bleeding, struggled on for his terrible goal. If Fernhall boys could have seen Snap then they would have remembered how that young face, white and set, once struggled through a Loamshire team just at the end of a match, and won the day for Fernhall. Football, unconsciously, was perhaps what the lad was thinking of at the moment, as step by step he gained on his prey, and yard by yard the black river drew nearer. At last it was but thirty yards away, and with a final effort Snap dashed in. 'Take 'em low,' the Fernhall captain had said in old days, 'never above the waist, Snap,' and Snap remembered the words now. With a rush he was alongside, down went his head with a scream that he couldn't repress, his long arms wrapped round the madman's knees, and pursued and pursuer rolled headlong to the ground on the very edge of the angry flood. How long they struggled there Snap didn't know. It was worse than any 'maul in goal' in old days, but, like the bull-dog of his land, once he had his grip, Snap would only loose with life. In vain the madman bit and struck, rolling over and over, shrieking with rage and fear. Hiding his head as much as possible, Snap held on, getting comparatively very few serious injuries, before strong hands dragged his opponent down, and as prairie and river and sky seemed to fade away a kindly voice said 'Thank God, the boy's all right."
SNAP AND THE MADMANSNAP AND THE MADMAN
When Snap recovered from the swoon which fatigue and hunger, cold and blows, had ended in, he found himself rolled in blankets, under just such a shelter as twelve hours ago he had longed to make for himself; a little yellow-haired girl was sleeping near him, and a huge fire throwing its rosy gleams on both, and on the kindly, bearded face of Nares, the cattleman, busy over a kettle of soup. The unfortunate cause of all their trouble was happier even than Snap. When Nares and Bromley, and the father of the little girl, had come up and overpowered him and released Snap, life seemed almost to leave the poor maniac. Blood was streaming from his side where the first revolver bullet had entered; his hands were swollen and dead to all feeling; his body was frost-bitten, but his mind was happily a blank; and before they could make a fire or do anything for his comfort, a more merciful Friend than they looked down and took the poor fellow to meet 'his chicks' in a kingdom where frost-bite and railway accidents are unknown.
'Well, boss, we did think as you'd took root in Chicago, or mebbe that the Armours had put you through their pork-making machine.'
'Well, no, not quite that, Dick, you old sinner. How are the boys?' replied Nares to a grey-headed old man, who was sitting complacently on the driver's seat of a cart, and watching 'the boss' put his own luggage on board. There are no porters and no servants, even for a big cattle-man, out west.
'How air the boys, you said. Well, right smart and active at meal-times, thank ye, and pretty slack at any other. But what's that, anyway, that you're bringing along?' and the old man's eyes rested with a look of no little disgust on the English-dressed and (to Western eyes) soft-looking lad, Snap Hales.
'That!' replied the boss, 'that is just—well, let me see, a colt I want you to break; a child I want you to nurse, Dick,' replied Nares.
'Nuss? I'll nuss him,' growled the old man. 'We don't want no loafers up at Rosebud.'
Poor Snap coloured up to his eyes, but felt more comfortable as Nares gave him a wink and a hand-up into the cart.
'Now then, air you fixed behind?' cried Dick.
'We are,' replied Nares.
'Then git,' yelled his foreman, bringing his whip across his horses' flanks, and for the next five minutes Snap and Nares, and the boxes, bags, &c., of each of them, bounded about like parched peas in a pan.
As the old man gradually steadied his horses to a trot, he turned round with a grin.
'That's pretty well sorted you, I reckon,' said he, 'and may be took the first coat off your tender-foot's hide.'
Luckily for the tender-foot (our friend Snap), it is one of the laws of nature that, given a lot of objects of various weights shaken up together, the lightest invariably comes to the top. During the last five minutes he had varied his seat frequently from the uncompromising corner of a trunk to the yielding and comfortable person of the burly Nares, from whose waistcoat (being of a pliant and springy character) the next bump would have removed him to a seat upon the prairie. Luckily, that bump never came.
Mile after mile of prairie rolled by, yellow where the snow (very thin hereabouts) left it uncovered, and apparently too sterile to feed a goat. Further on it improved, and great tufts of golden bunch grass showed through the thin sprinkling of snow, and here and there a sage-hen fluttered up or a jack rabbit scuttled away.
About noon our friends crossed a river, on the further side of which were the feeding-lands of Nares's ranche. Some miles again from the river was a range of low rolling hills and broken lands, the shelter provided by Nature for the beasts of the field against blizzards and snowstorms. Nares used to boast his ranche had every advantage obtainable in America—plenty of water, river-lands to cut hay upon for winter feed, hills and broken land for shelter in storm-time, and a railway handy to take produce to market. There are very few such ranches nowadays in America, as even its great prairies are not boundless—a fact much overlooked by its go-ahead citizens.
'I reckon the cows sold pretty well, boss, this year,' suggested the old man when he had unhitched the team and kindled a bit of a fire for lunch.
'Yes, they sold well, Wharton, and none of them got damaged on the way down. There won't be much to do on the ranche now till spring,' added Nares.
'Guess that's why you're bringing an extra hand along,' snapped the old man. 'Why! Jeehoshaphat! what's the matter with you now?' he shouted.
Poor Snap had tried first one side of the fire, then the other, with an equal want of success. On one side the smoke nearly choked and blinded him, on the other worse things awaited him. A blanket, which just accommodated 'the boss' and Wharton, was stretched on the windward side of the fire. With a weary sigh Snap threw himself down beside it. With a yell of pain he bounded up again, holding first one foot, then the other, in the air, and all the time applying his hands sorrowfully to the softest part of his person. The old foreman had laid a trap for the tender-foot, and he had sat upon it, the 'it' being a bed of what the natives call prickly pears, a peculiarly vicious kind of cactus about the size of a small potato, which unobserved spreads all over the ground, and sends its long thin spines through everything which presses upon them. When, at last, the good-natured Nares understood his friend's sorrows, and had managed to stop laughing, he gave Snap a place on the blanket, and, turning him over on his face, proceeded tenderly to pluck him. It is no fun to be converted at a moment's notice into a well-filled pincushion.
At lunch Nares told old Wharton the story of the maniac-hunt recorded in the last chapter. As he told the story of little Madge's danger and salvation Wharton's eyes wandered from 'the boss' to the boy beside him. At last, when the story was over, he sighed softly 'Jee-hosh-a-phat.' Then he rolled his quid and expectorated. Then he got up and held out his great fist to Snap with these words, 'Say! were them pears prickly? Well, never mind. I guess you needn't sit on no more now. I'm a-gwine to be your "miss," Britisher;' and it is only fair to add, the old man kept his word.
An hour or two afterwards Nares and Snap got out at Rosebud, and our hero entered his new home, a big one-storied house built of rough logs dovetailed into each other, the cracks filled up with moss and covered over with clay. Indoors, the floor was covered with skins. On the walls were antlers of deer and wapiti and mountain sheep, from which hung half a dozen rifles, hunting-knives, &c. There was a bench or two about the place, a big table, at one end a huge open stove, and along the walls were ranged a dozen shelves or bunks not unlike those you see on board ship. A small room opened off from the main apartment, and in this Nares himself slept and kept his accounts. Outside were some few smaller buildings—a cook-house, a forge, and so on. A huge piece of land enclosed with rough timber fencing ran alongside the house. This was a corral for horses or weak cattle. A smaller corral for horses likely to be wanted at a short notice also adjoined the ranche.
'Now, Snap,' said Nares, 'this is Rosebud. Rosy enough for a worker, what we call a "rustler" out here, but not a bed of roses for a loafer. There's your bunk when you are up here, but I expect you'll be wanted out on the feeding-grounds most of your time. Anyhow, for the first day or two you can help me with the books, and try your hand at the cooking.'
So Snap tried his hand at bread-making and failed; flour and water won't make bread of themselves, and, even when you have made your dough, if you don't flour your hands the compound will stick to them. However, old Wharton set the boy right and gave him the soup to look after.
'Put some salt in it,' said the old chap, 'you'll find it in a tin up there,' pointing to a shelf over his head. 'You'd better just taste it to see as you get it right. The boys don't like no fooling with their broth.'
So Snap got down the tin and put a couple of spoonfuls into the broth and tasted it; two more, and tasted again; and still the compound did not seem salt enough.
'I say, Wharton,' said Snap, after tasting the salt itself, 'this is very weak salt of yours.'
'Guess it is,' replied the old man, 'table-salt the boss calls it; I call it jist rubbish. But never mind, shove in the lot if it don't taste strong enough.' So in it went, and Snap stirred vigorously, added some onions, and himself looked forward to a share of hischef d'œuvre.
By-and-by the 'boys' trooped in, tall, bronzed fellows in great wideawake hats, loose shirts, and huge spurs. Each brought his saddle with him and chucked it into a corner as he entered. 'How do, boss?' they remarked; 'How do, Wharton?' and then most of them added, staring at Snap, 'Why, who the deuce are you anyway?' This question having been satisfactorily answered, all sat down to food, and Snap thought he had never seen such a rapid and wholesale consumption of meat and drink in his life.
'Where are the rest of the boys?' asked Nares of one of the three who had come in.
'Gone after a band of cattle which we found after you left, boss. I guess we'll have 'em in to-morrow. There are several want branding: one old scrub bull in partickler.'
'Yes,' added another, 'and I'm thinking he'll go on wanting for some time yet. You can't hold him with any ropes on this ranche.'
Gradually even the cowboys' appetites seemed satisfied, and one by one they stretched themselves out on rugs by the fire, and puffed away silently at their pipes. They were long thin men for the most part, and tightly belted at the waist.
'Mighty good soup that to-day,' said one.
'Glad you liked it,' said Snap proudly; 'I made that. I don't think it was bad for a first attempt.'
'Satisfying, anyhow,' said Nares, 'I never felt so full before.'
'Yes, I'm full up,' added someone else, and then silence again ensued for a space. Presently there was a crack and the tinkle of falling brass, and a button flew on to the hearth.
'Bless me,' cried old Dick Wharton, 'if I don't feel as if I was getting fuller every minute.' This seemed to be the general feeling; even Snap shared it.
'Why, what in thunder's the matter?' cried Frank Atkins, leanest and hardest of hard riders. 'This yere belt has gone round me with six holes to spare these two years, and now it won't meet by an inch.'
It certainly was odd. They had sat down like Pharaoh's lean cattle, they had risen like his fat cattle, and they had gone on 'rising' ever since, until now they were all portly as aldermen. Suddenly a light dawned upon Wharton.
'Say, boy, what did you put in that broth?'
'Nothing,' said Snap, 'except salt and onions.'
'Where did you get that salt?'
'Why, out of the tin over your head,' said Snap.
'This 'un, eh?' inquired the old man, holding up a small round tin.
'Yes, that's it.'
'Wal,' said the old man slowly, 'I've heerd of Houses of Parliament being blowed up by dynamite, but I never heerd tell of a ranche being bust up by Borwick's baking-powder afore!'
That first night Snap was glad enough to get to bed. Not that he was sleepy; on the contrary, tired out as he was, he was preternaturally wideawake. Everything was so new to him, and, besides, that horrible Borwick was still an unquiet spirit within him. The cowboys of the North-West are probably the only possible rivals to the ostrich in the matter of digestion still extant. Like the ostrich, they could safely dine on door-nails and sup on soda-water bottles, so that they had already forgotten Borwick and were snoring peacefully. Snap wished he could imitate them. The bed in which he found himself combined all the advantages of a bed and a thermometer. Founded upon pine boards, it consisted of five pairs of blankets. In summer heat you slept on one blanket out of doors. In temperate weather you slept under one indoors. As it grew colder the number of blankets above you increased, until four above (with a buffalo-robe) and one below indicated blizzards and frostbite on the prairie.
It seemed to Snap that just as he was going off to sleep someone struck a match, lit a pipe, and then began lighting the fire. This was old Wharton, but he let the boy lie (being a charitable old soul) until he roused him up with:
'Now, lazybones, you can wash in the crik outside if you've a mind to, only breakfast is ready.'
Snap hopped out of his blankets and ran down to the crik, although no one else seemed to care about it, and so biting was the cold that he felt it would have been worth his last dollar to be allowed to take a hand at the wood-chopping going on outside. The worst of it was that he couldn't chop 'worth a cent,' as big Frank Atkins informed him, and indeed, although he hit the log all over and with every part of the axe, it seemed even to Snap that he made very small progress. The sense of his own uselessness was getting absolutely oppressive to the boy as it was borne in upon him more and more that even cooking, chopping, and such like, want learning, and don't come naturally to any of us.
Breakfast was a short ceremony—bacon and jam—'trapper's jam,' that is, made from bacon grease and a spoonful of brown sugar, washed down with a huge draught of weak tea. After this everyone lit his pipe, and old Wharton, turning to Snap, said:
'You may as well go along with the boys to meet Tony and the rest with them scrub cattle. They're a bit short-handed, and I can't go myself; the boss will be making things hum here up at the ranche for the next day or two.'
A few minutes later Atkins came up with a dun-coloured pony, 'a buckskin' he called it.
'Theer,' said Wharton, 'if I'm your nuss, Shaver, that theer's your cradle; and you'd better get in right now.'
There was a grin on everyone's face, but Snap, though afraid of being laughed at, was afraid of nothing else, and had ridden a little since he was a very small boy, so he climbed unhesitatingly into the great cowboy saddle. As he did so his amiable 'Cradle' laid back her ears, and tried to get hold of his toe in her teeth. Being frustrated in this, she curled herself into a hoop, and began to 'reverse' as the waltzers call it. Then she stood still and waited. Atkins threw himself into the saddle and cracked his whip, Snap touched his mare with the spurs, and then the Cradle began what Wharton called 'rocking,'i.e.bucking, in a way that only prairie-reared horses understand. To his credit be it said, Snap sat tight for the first 'buck,' at the second he went up into very high latitudes with his legs almost round his horse's neck, at the third he 'came south,' reposing gracefully on the buckskin's quarters like a costermonger on his 'moke,' while at the fourth he sat promptly down upon the prairie, from whence he watched 'that cayouse' finish her performance by herself. When Atkins and Wharton and the rest had finished laughing, which took longer than finishing breakfast, they picked up the crest-fallen Snap and put him upon a quieter beast.
'That's one of yourn too,' laughed Wharton; 'you'd better have the six buckskins for your string, my lad, but I'd keep old White-foot just for Sundays or any time as you feel lonesome and want amusement.'
Snap didn't reply, but thought to himself that if indeed the six horses in the little corral were set aside for his use, it should not be long before he was master of the good-looking, bad-tempered brute which had just grassed him so ignominiously.
'Not hurted much, are you, young 'un?' asked Atkins.
'No.'
'That's right, let's get,' and, so saying, Atkins led off at a canter, Snap's new steed following at a gait easy as a rocking-chair.
The early morning is always the very best of the day, even in our begrimed and foggy English cities; on the plains of the North-West the morning air is as exhilarating as champagne. Every living thing feels and acknowledges the influence of the young day. Horses toss their heads and strain their strong muscles in a glorious 'breather' without encouragement from the rider, while the rider feels his blood racing through his veins, his heart beating, his brain quick and clear, and the whole man full of unconscious thankfulness to God for the delight of merely living. All that day Atkins and Snap rode towards and through the foot-hills, and at night camped where someone had evidently camped not long ago. Being handy and anxious to learn, Snap soon made friends with his companion, found the poles on which the last wanderers had hung a blanket in lieu of a tent, found some wood for firing, fetched the water for the billy, and learned how to hobble the horses.
That night he felt, as he watched the stars through the tops of the big bull-pines, he had really begun life out west, and might after all learn to hold his own with the strong men round him. It was an improvement on the night before, when everything seemed very hopeless and strange.
Early on the second morning, Atkins and Snap heard a distant roaring in the hills. Snap's thoughts at once reverted to bears and suchlike beasts, and foolishly he gave utterance to his thoughts. Atkins laughed heartily.
'No, no, them's the cows a-coming. Didn't you know as we were near them last night?'
'Not I,' said Snap; 'how did you know?'
'I heerd 'em just afore we camped, but I knew if we'd kep' on we shouldn't have struck 'em till after dark, so I guessed we'd just camp by ourselves.'
By-and-by the lowing of the beasts, which the winding glens and resounding woods had so magnified and distorted to Snap's ears, came quite close, and Atkins told him to come 'well off the track, in here among the bull-pines, and light down, hold your horse, and for goodness' sake hold your jaw, for if old Tony hears you speak he'll not stop swearing till he has cussed all the breath out of his body.' So Snap 'lit down' and held his tongue, and presently he started as he found a pair of big brown eyes fastened on him from the bush by his side. Then there was a little frightened snort, the first sound he had heard; a beast's tail was whisked in the air, and with a plunge half a dozen, mostly yearlings, crashed past him parallel to the trail. It took nearly half an hour for the whole band, nearly sixty all told, to straggle past, feeding as they went, and it entered into Snap's mind to wonder how anyone ever heard or saw a real wild beast if these half-tame parti-coloured oxen could go so quietly through brush and timber.
Last of all came the drivers; three cowboys they would have been called, though Snap thought the term 'boy' fitted them as badly as 'cow' fitted at least one-half of the stock in front of them. Still, on a cattle range all bulls, however old and fierce, are 'cows' to the end of their days, and all those who deal with them 'boys,' no matter how grey their hair.
That night Snap had his first turn of what he considered 'active service,' being told off to keep the cattle together for the first half of the night, another man lending him a hand to prevent accidents. Although ordered so peremptorily to keep his mouth shut on the trail, lest the sound of a strange voice should scare the beasts, he was now told that he had better sing or shout from time to time, letting the beasts hear his voice, the human voice seeming to inspire them with a certain amount of confidence.
Snap found it necessary to sing or do something of that sort for other reasons as he led his horse about or rode him slowly on his solitary rounds. After such a day as he had had his eyes were more inclined to sleep than watch, and he envied the drowsy cattle as one by one they lay down with a contented 'ouf' upon the prairie. At last all the great shadows had sunk down to rest, and all you could see in the starlight was an indistinct dark mass upon the prairie. From time to time a shadow would appear a hundred yards or so outside the group, moving silently and slowly away. Quick as thought, when this occurred, another shadow (Snap's companion) would dash from his post and turn back the truant, feeding away from his companions, to the rest he had deserted. Snap soon learnt the game, and was getting very interested in it, when suddenly he noticed all the shadows move then rise to their feet, and, before even his galloping companion in the night-watch could get near them, they were dashing in wild, headlong flight into the darkness.
'Wake the boys and follow,' roared his companion, vanishing into the darkness after the flying beasts, and like a dream herd and herdsmen were gone, and Snap left alone. The 'boys' didn't need much waking. By the time Snap was at the camp they were up, and in an incredibly short time their horses were caught and saddled, and they were galloping after the panic-stricken beasts.
'What stampeded them, rot them?' asked Atkins as he tightened his girths.
'I don't know; they were still as stones one moment and gone the next,' answered Snap.
'Bar! I reckon,' growled another cowboy; 'there always are bar about this forsaken camp.'
'You stay here till we come back, and if we aren't back by to-morrow noon make tracks for Rosebud,' shouted Atkins as he galloped off, leaving Snap alone in camp without an idea where Rosebud was or how he was ever going to get there.
However, as there was nothing to be done, he had a look first to see if his horse was all right, and then, being reassured upon that point, kicked the embers of the camp fire into a blaze, put the frying-pan, with some cold bacon in it, left over from supper, somewhere handy for breakfast, and lay down in his rugs. In five minutes he had forgotten his loneliness, and was in as sweet a sleep as innocence and hard work ever won for a weary mortal. It was almost dawn when he woke with a start, hearing his buckskin snorting and crashing about in the bushes close to him. As he jumped to his feet he heard the frying-pan rattle, and as he glanced in that direction he saw a huge, heavy beast slope off into the forest. I say 'slope' advisedly, although it is slang. What a bear does, I suppose, is to gallop, but that word gives you an idea of great speed, which would be wrong. If I had said 'canter,' the graceful pace of a lady's hack is at once conjured up before your mind's eye, and there is very little grace in Bruin's movements. He doesn't trot, and he only 'shuffles' when he is walking. If I had said 'roll,' which in some degree describes his action, the word would not have necessarily implied the use of feet at all, so I must stick, please, to 'slope,' as being the best word to express the smooth, quiet way which a bear has of conveying himself with a certain rapidity out of harm's way.
The light was very dim, as the time was that mysterious season between midnight and dawn, and Snap knew very little about rifles, but, being thoroughly English, without counting the cost he snatched up a Winchester repeating rifle, and proceeded to 'pump lead' at the vanishing bear as long as he could see him. Then all was still again, and remained so until two cheeky little 'robber-birds,' in coats of grey and black, came hopping round the dead embers with their heads on one side, complaining noisily that the upturned frying-pan was quite empty. Snap, too, was sorry for this, and wished that he had interrupted Bruin a little earlier in his midnight pilfering.
When the dawn had fully come, and the great red sun was climbing up into the heavens, the boy went to look at the bear's tracks. Later on, when he had learnt some of the secrets of wood-craft, those tracks would have been plain enough to him—a story written in large print, which he could easily read from his saddle. Now, groping about with his nose almost on the ground, he could not make much of them, and hardly knew the bear's tracks from his pony's. At last (and not very far from the camp fire) Snap came upon a great splash of blood. Even he (inexperienced though he was) understood this, and rightly concluded that the bear was hit. 'A deuced lucky fluke,' he said to himself honestly enough, as he went back to the fireside, his eyes brightening, as far away on the plain outside the clump of bull-pines he saw two of the cowboys cantering towards him. They were soon alongside and listened to his story, after which they went to look at the tracks.
'Wal,' said one, 'you've got the right sort o' grit, lad, but it's tarnation lucky for you that that bar as you shot at warn't the critter as stampeded them cows last night.'
'Why?' asked Snap.
'Why? wal,' replied the cowboy, 'them tracks is the tracks of a black bar, and they ain't of no account. The bar as stampeded them cattle last night was a grizzly, and if you'd happened to take it into your head to do a little rifle-shooting at him with that thing—wal! you wouldn't have been here this morning.'
'I reckon you mout as weel go along o' the boy and fetch in that "bar,"' said old Tony to Atkins. 'I guess he won't travel far, by the froth in the blood.'
'Right, pard,' replied Atkins; 'come along, Snap, and leave your horse with the boys.'
Snap did as he was bid, and strode manfully after Atkins into the bush, although, from the unusual amount of riding which he had done lately, he was 'as stiff as starch' as he expressed it. Moreover, although he had simply to follow Atkins, whilst Atkins had to find and follow the trail which Snap had long since lost, he found it impossible to keep pace with the cowboy, or in any way to imitate the long, silent stride of that worthy. Snap's pace was neither swift nor silent, and I regret to say he very soon became furiously hot and desperately angry. It did not seem to matter how much he tried to avoid them, his shin was always coming in contact with dead logs over which the luxuriant ferns had grown in summer. At every stride he trod upon a dry twig, which cracked as loudly as a stock whip, and to finish his discomfiture every hazel in the forest swung back and lashed him across his eyes or nose. If he kept his temper through all this, he found himself up to his knees in a bog hole, or a briar tweaked his cap off, or a creeper coiled round his ankle and let him down with a terrific thump. At last Atkins turned round with a compassionate grin:
'You ain't much used to "still-hunting," shaver; suppose you just wait here awhile, and I'll go on and see if that "bar" of yourn has any travelling left in him.'
Snap did not much relish the idea, but even he felt that if the bear was to be approached unawares he, Snap Hales, ought not to be one of the stalking party. So he sat down on a log and wondered how long it would be before he too would be able to steal swift and silent through the forest, like the tall, lean figure which had just left him. There is, no doubt, a good deal to annoy a tender-foot at first in big-game shooting in America. For a grown man to realise that he has not yet learned to walk is a rather bitter experience, and yet not one man in a thousand can walk or 'creep' decently to game in timber, even after a good many seasons' experience.
Though not nearly as cold on the Rosebud as it had been in that other forest, in which Snap passed a night a week previously, our hero was beginning to feel quite 'crisp' about the ears and nose before anything occurred to break the monotony of his watch.
Listening intently, every sound in the forest came clearly to his ears. The loud bell-like note of a raven far overhead interested him. He always had thought at home that a raven had but one note, that hoarse funereal croak which, together with his colour, has got the bird such a bad name. And yet here was an unmistakable raven with quite a musical voice! Then a chipmunk came out of a hole in a log, the very one on which Snap was sitting, and regarded the intruder rigidly for a good five minutes, after which the pretty, impertinent little beast poured out a volley of chipmunk billingsgate at him, and with a whisk of his tail shot back into his house again. Snap saw the little squirrel-like head peeping at him again and again after that, curious, apparently, to see the effect of its oratory; but, being a decent lad, Snap didn't even shy his cap at his pretty reviler. By-and-by Snap heard a bough swing with a grating sound in the distance, and then, ever so softly, he heard, 'plod, plod,' 'plod, plod.' He could only just hear it, but he guessed in a moment whose slow, even tread that must be, and, brave lad as he was, the blood mounted up into his face, and his heart beat until it sounded as loud as the old dinner-gong at Fairbury. 'Ah!' he thought, 'Atkins has put up the bear after all, and here he comes, wounded and desperate, straight for me.'
So noiselessly that even the chipmunk did not notice him, Snap slipped off the log and knelt down behind it, resting the barrel of his Winchester on the log, determined to begin to shoot as soon as the feet of the foe, now drawing rapidly nearer and nearer, should bring him into an opening amongst the big trees. Crunch! crunch! came the steps, and Snap's finger was on the trigger. Next moment a big black mass would push through the bushes, the report of the rifle would ring out, and then through the smoke what would Snap see: his first bear rolling on the ground, or a great and hideous death, all teeth and claws, coming straight at him, rather faster than the 'Flying Dutchman?'
As these thoughts coursed through his brain, and his heart ached with suppressed excitement, a voice sang out, 'Halloh, don't you shoot! Bust my gizzard, why, what in thunder do you take me for?' and the next minute Atkins, hot and tired, plodded out into the open, and let a great black skin slide heavily down on to the ground at his feet.
To those who have never had a chance of comparing the footfall of a bear with that of a man, Snap's mistake may seem ridiculous; but even Atkins, whose life had been in serious danger, readily forgave the boy, stipulating only that for the future he should never 'draw a bead until he knew not only what he was shooting at, but what part of it he was trying to hit.' Many a grievous accident would be avoided in this way, and not one head of big game lost per annum by it; for, even if the coat you see passing through the thick timber be that of a beast of chase, it is almost a certainty that a snap-shot at it will only end in a useless wound given to some unfortunate hind, or a scratch with very bad results to the shooter if it happen to be given to a bad-tempered old grizzly.
If, by ill-luck, the coat is that of a man, it is 'a mountain to a molehill' that you shoot him dead on the spot. If any boy ever goes big-game shooting after reading my book, let him take an old hunter's advice, 'Know what you are shooting at before you shoot.'
'How many times did you shoot at this fellow, Snap?' asked Atkins.
'About three times at him, and twice where I thought he ought to be,' replied the boy, turning over the skin of his first bear with a loving hand. The skin was bright and in good order, and the fur deep and thick.
'Well,' laughed Atkins, 'I guess you hit him quite as often as was necessary, though, according to what you say, you must have missed him four times. I reckon you must have hit him when you were shooting at the place where he ought to have been, for the bullet has gone in behind and travelled all up him. Never mind,' he added, 'it will make a rare good robe for you this winter!'
'You have had a good tramp, Atkins, let me carry the skin,' said Snap, and Atkins, with a smile, consented.
'By George,' cried Snap, 'come up. Why, I say! Atkins, I'm bothered if I can carry it,' and, indeed, as Atkins knew very well, the green skin with the head on was more than anyone but a strong man could pack with comfort. However, between them they got it through the timber to the 'crik,' as Tony called a small stream by which he had tied up their horses.
'But where is Tony,' asked Snap, 'and the cattle?'
'What, the cows, you mean?' asked Atkins.
'Yes.'
'Why, bless my stars, you don't suppose that Tony is such a tarnation fool as to let them critters stop to smell this here skin, do you? Wait till you see what our cayouses say to it,' Atkins added. 'Now then, steady, will you, quietly,' he said, approaching his own pony. 'Here, Snap, get in front of him and don't let him look round,' he added, and as Snap obeyed him he slipped the rolled-up skin behind his saddle, lashed it firm into its place, and leapt into the saddle as with a snort and a bound the pony shook itself free from Snap's hold.
Then Snap saw some real riding for the first time. Perhaps that pony never got quite six feet off the ground, and perhaps he had not lunched freely on earthquakes, but, to see the way in which he performed, you would have thought so. First, down came his nose between his knees, in spite of his rider's strong hands and the cruel curb; out went his heels like twin cannon balls; and away he went over the prairie, travelling apparently all the time on his forelegs, when he was on the ground at all, which was not often. Really, it did not seem possible that his limbs should remain united. No muscles, you would think, could stand the strain of those furious bucks and kicks. Every moment Snap expected to see the strange figure part in flying fragments, the legs one way, the body another, and Atkins in a third direction. But, though for the second time since his arrival upon the prairie Snap himself got unseated, the cowboy sat tight until he was out of sight of our hero, who, having luckily stuck to his bridle, managed to recover and remount his horse, which had become almost as unmanageable as the one which carried the bear-skin.
Once again in the saddle, Snap made the best of his way after his friend, and some time before nightfall was agreeably surprised to see the ranche in the distance. It must be confessed that he had had no idea that he was near home until he saw the smoke from the ranche chimneys, having been completely 'turned round' as Yankees say. Atkins had been home some time, and the skin was pegged out to dry. Old Wharton laughed until his sides ached at the boy's rueful plight and his very apparent stiffness. 'Ah,' he said, 'I guess the Cradle don't work very easy yet, but my word, boy, if you do want a donkey to gallop or a cayouse to kick, just you put a carrot in front of one or a bear-skin behind the other, and you won't have to wait long, you bet.' In the big corral was a band of about thirty-seven cattle, quite enough after their long drive, and, as Tony said, 'likely to give anyone a nice day's work, branding them to-morrow.'
A rancher's life is not an easy one. The hardest work comes in spring and autumn, when the cattle are 'rounded up,' or gathered together from their feeding-grounds all over the place, and parcelled out amongst the different owners. As the great pastures have no fences to mark off one from another, of course the cattle stray, and the Rosebud herd and the Snake River herd mix with one another, and with individuals belonging to ranches even more distant than these. At the great annual round-up a certain number of cowboys from each ranche in the district meet, and proceed to drive the whole of the neighbouring ranges, collecting a vast mass of cattle as they go.
Each cowboy has about a dozen ponies with him, and in the work of the round-up even this large string is very often used up. For horse and man the work is as severe as human muscle and horseflesh can stand. During the day the men ride round by the banks of every crik, investigate every quiet glen among the hills, sweep over the rolling plains, and little by little gather up the waifs and strays into a huge herd. At night this herd has to be watched, as well as the big band of horses accompanying it.
From time to time along the route the occurrence of one of the big home ranches causes a delay. Here a great corral or enclosure of rough logs has been erected, and smaller pens of a like nature. The whole party camp near the ranche, and the cattle are herded beside it. In the morning comes the chief work of the year. Every cow with a calf at her heel is the subject of careful scrutiny. If she bears the Rosebud brand, the calf belongs to the Rosebud ranche, and has to be caught there and then and branded. If not branded whilst still a calf, the little beast will be lost to the owner, for, once grown up, with no ever-present nurse to point out to whom she belongs, the unmarked heifer belongs to anyone who can catch and brand her. There are always a few scrub cattle on every range—beasts like some of those whose capture has been described in the last two chapters—who had succeeded so far in escaping the cowboy's hot iron.
The work of 'cutting out,' that is, separating, the beasts to be branded from the rest of the herd, is to the cowboy what Rugby Union is to the schoolboy. It is full of excitement, tries every muscle of the horse, every quality, mental or physical, of the rider. This, on a small scale, was the work awaiting Snap on the morrow of his bear-hunt. Amongst the beasts driven in were a few which required to be branded, and, though their capture was mere child's play to the old hands, used to following a dodging heifer through a herd a thousand strong, it was intensely exciting to Snap. How the ponies twisted and turned amongst the crowding beasts, never for one moment losing touch of the animal which they wanted to cut out, was a marvel to him for many a day. Polo on a quick pony is trying to a man's seat, but cattle-driving on a pony which twists like a snipe and doubles like a hare, without any warning to the rider, is even more so.
Having cut out, lassoed, and branded all that were unmarked save one, Tony and Wharton held a consultation as to that one. The men had not much to do; they had just had work enough in the crisp air to 'get their monkey up,' and were ready for anything.
'Say, Dick,' said Tony, 'shall we brand that old bull? the old varmint has had the laugh of us long, enough. Let's scar his rump for him this time, anyway!'
The scrub bull alluded to by Tony was an old acquaintance of the men at Rosebud ranche. More than once had he been thrown and tied, always to break away and set the branders at defiance. Whilst the men were talking he was gradually drawing away from the herd, a strong, heavy-built beast, fierce and long-horned as a Texan bull, strong and sturdy as an English shorthorn. A short, crisply curled coat of a dull brown made him look, but for his more graceful build, more like a buffalo than a domestic beast.
'All right, boys, let's have another go at him,' assented Wharton; and Wharton, Tony, Snap, and another rode quietly out to surround and drive in the veteran. The ponies certainly entered into the spirit the thing. Anything more meek and more innocent than 'the Cradle' as he wandered casually out with Snap on his back, now and then stopping for a mouthful of grass, and again turning his back completely on the bull, Snap thought he had never seen. And yet somehow the ponies were all round the bull, and, unless he had the pluck to run the gauntlet, he had only one way open to him, and that led into the small corral. Little by little they drew in, pushing their victim so slowly in front of them that he must still have believed that he was choosing his own course, and only moving at all because he wished to. By quiet, clever generalship old Wharton and his boys got the bull within a short run of the corral. Then the bull began to hesitate. He evidently 'smelt a rat,' and did not mean to go another yard. This was the critical moment. Swinging their lariats round their heads, the four riders dashed at the bull with a yell which would have turned a party of Zulus white with envy. Snap, not to be outdone, yelled in chorus what was really a relic of the old hunting days at Fairbury, and clashed forward with the rest. For a moment the grand old beast lowered his great shaggy front, and looked as if he meant to stand the charge. If he had done so, the band of horsemen must have split upon him as waves upon a rock. But the yell and the swinging lassoes were too much for his nerves. Turning slowly, he galloped into the corral, the horses dashed after him, the huge bars of the fence were put back into their places, and the scrub bull was fairly caged. So far, so good. But this same bull had often been caged before, and was still unbranded.
'Will you rope him, Tony?' asked Wharton.
'You bet,' replied that worthy, divesting himself of pretty nearly everything except his lasso, so as to be 'pretty handy over them rails, if so be as it's necessary,' he explained.
In the corral was a post, firm-set in the ground, and stout as heart of oak. Round this Tony coiled his lasso, leaving lots of loose line and the fatal noose free. Meanwhile the bull kept his eye on Tony just as Tony kept his eye on the bull. Snorting and pawing the ground, the beast backed against the rails, and then, finding that there was no escape, lowered his head and came with a perfect roar of rage at his self-composed enemy. Tony stood his ground just long enough to throw his lasso, and then darted away. The long loop flew straight enough to its mark, but by some ill-luck failed to fix upon the bull, who, free and savage, fairly coursed poor Tony round the ring. But the cowboy 'didn't reckon to be wiped out by one of them scrubbers, no-how,' and, seizing his opportunity, scrambled over the rails of the corral like a monkey up a lamp-post, remarking, when he reached the other side in safety:
'Jeehoshaphat! I did think he would have ventilated my pants for me that time, anyways.'
At the next attempt Tony's lasso settled round the great beast's horns, tightened as he plunged past the post, and as he reached the end of his tether brought him with a stunning crash to the ground. As Snap said afterwards, 'those cowboys hopped over the fence like fleas, and had the old bull's leg tied up, and his head made fast to the pole with the strongest green hide-rope on the ranche, before you could say Jack Robinson.'
For a while the great beast stood trembling, and still dazed by his fall, but the sight of Tony with the branding-iron roused him to fresh fury. The huge quarters seemed to contract for a mighty effort, the shaggy neck bent down with irresistible force, the thongs of green hide creaked and then snapped, as snapped the withy bands which bound the wrists of Samson.
There were four men and a bull in the corral when those ropes broke; there was one man and a bull still left in thirty seconds after that event. With a furious charge the monster scattered his tormentors, who fled in every direction, two over the rails and a third just in time to fling himself flat on his face and roll out underneath the bottom bar, with those sharp horns, 'straight as levelled lances,' only just behind him.
When they had time to turn they saw a sight which, if it had not been so full of peril for a dear old comrade, must have elicited peals of laughter. 'Bust me if you shall lick us,' said Tony, grinding his teeth as he heard the straining thongs begin to give; and when the bull charged the brave old fellow held on to his branding-iron and waited. Of course the flying forms of Tony's companions drew the bull's attention, and his great horned front plunged past the one foe who disdained flight without observing him. With a shattering crash the bull dashed against the corral-fence just too late to pound a man to pieces with his horns, and as he reeled back himself, half stunned by the tremendous collision with those unyielding oaken bars, the bull was aware of a fresh indignity. Tony had him by the tail!!
Yes, it's all very well to plunge and roar with rage, to swing the lithe, active foe clean off his feet, and dash him against the oak rails of your prison, O gallant Texan bull; but that foe, half Yankee as he is now, was bred in gallant Yorkshire, and, once he has his grip, will let go when a bull-dog does, that is, when he is dead; just then and no sooner.
TONY AND THE 'SCRUBBER'TONY AND THE 'SCRUBBER'
And so the scrub-bull found. In vain he dashed about like a beast possessed, tore up the earth, and rent the air with furious bellowings. Tony had no idea of letting go; his life depended on his holding on; his muscles were like iron, and his nerves were English, hardened by a rough life in America. The absurd part of it was that at every breathing-time Tony made a fresh effort to brand his victim, for he had stuck to his iron with his one hand as tenaciously as to the bull with the other. The story takes long in the telling, but in the doing it did not take half as long. Before anyone could intervene to help the foolhardy old man the end had come. In dashing round the ring in a cloud of dust (no one quite saw how it happened) the old man's head must have struck against the post or against a railing. As the dust cleared, the horrified spectators saw Tony standing in the ring, his head hanging, his eyes vacant, still clinging instinctively to his iron. For a moment the bull paused, almost crouching like a cat, then, with a roar of rage, hurled himself forward. The old man didn't move, didn't seem to understand, and it flashed through the minds of the helpless and horror-stricken spectators that, though still standing, Tony was 'all abroad,' his wits temporarily scattered by collision with the post.
There was a muffled shock: the man was flung, like foam from the crest of a breaker, half across the corral. Three other men's forms were in the ring, a couple of revolver shots rang out, and then, side by side, Tony and the bull lay upon that sandy battlefield, reddened with the life-blood streaming slowly from each. As his companions closed round him Tony managed to struggle to his elbow, saying, with a smile which spoke volumes for his pluck:
'Sorry you killed the scrubber, boys, he'd a been kinder like a monument for me, 'cos you see he has got the Rosebud brand now; you bet, he's got the Rosebud brand——'
Poor Tony! those were his last words, and as his comrades carried him off his last battlefield they felt that the best rough-rider and the gentlest, most kind-hearted giant amongst them had done his last day's work.
A few days later, when the sun was setting on the prairie, making the whole sky crimson, and flooding the world with its last rays of light, they buried him by the river's edge, Nares reading the funeral service over him, who, though perhaps he had said less of religion than most men, had lived a life so close to Nature, and face to face with God and His works, that he must have learnt the great secret and loved the Creator, as he undoubtedly in his own rough way loved all His beautiful creation. Over Tony's grave the men set up a rough headstone, or cross, rather, of timber, and on it they nailed the bleached skull and bones of his dead enemy; while underneath Snap burned with a hot iron some words which he remembered from Bret Harte:—
A roughish chap in his talk was he,And an awkward man in a row;But he never funked, and he never lied,I guess he never knowed how.
The loss of Tony was a loss which the whole ranche felt. Had he died in the full swing of work, the machine must almost have broken down. But Toby never wanted his spell of rest except when there was nothing much to do, and he had chosen to take his 'big spell of rest' in the same way. Still, even in the winter season, his loss made a great deal of difference to Snap. With Tony the ranche was full-handed, and the boy was really more or less superfluous. Now he had his hands full. There was a man's place to supply, and he worked hard and uncomplainingly to fill it. There are a thousand things to be done about a ranche in winter: cattle to feed and water, wood to hew, repairs about the ranche which want attending to, supplies to be fetched from the nearest town. At all these things Snap took his turn. No one cares to turn out first in the morning with a bitter frost outside and make up the fire for the benefit of the rest. Even strong, hard men will lie watching to see if someone else won't volunteer, and hug themselves for their smartness when someone else turns out before them, so that they may get up in the glow of a fire which others have made. The 'boys' might well have insisted on Snap's doing this, but he was popular, and no one fagged him. They knew he was a good plucked one, so nobody bullied him. That being so, Snap set himself the work to do, and nine mornings out of ten it was Snap who raked up the ashes and blew the fire into a blaze, who woke the sleepers with a joke, and had coffee ready for the elder men. It was Snap, too, who sang the best song round the wood-fire at night; and be sure there was nothing that went straighter to the hearts of the cowboys than his fresh young voice rattling out the well-remembered words of 'The Hounds of the Meynell' or Whyte Melville's 'Place where the old Horse died.'
Some of the boys had never been in England, and knew nothing of fox-hunting, but all loved a good horse and entered heartily into the spirit of the song. And so it was that in the early morning, and late in the fire-lit evening, Snap won his way to his companions' favour. Though gently bred, they recognised him as being not only game to the backbone, but ready and willing to do a man's work. That once understood, they were his friends through thick and thin, always ready to teach him anything, to make room for him in a hunting-party, or to chaff his head off if he made a hash of either work or play. By spring Snap was in a fair way to be a useful hand upon the ranche.
And now winter was coming down upon Rosebud in real earnest. The first 'cold snap,' as it is called, had caught our friends as they crossed the Rockies, and, intensified by the height at which they were travelling, had seemed very bitter indeed. After the cold snap, which only lasted from a week to ten days, came as it were an aftermath of summer, a second season of sunshine and delight, which the natives call the Indian summer. Snap began to think that the severities of a Canadian winter were all bunkum, invented as a background for all the terrible stories of the fur-traders of old days. This Indian summer was just the loveliest October weather which a healthy man could wish for, a little crisper and keener at night than our own Octobers, but in the day so bright, so clear, so sunny, that life (however hard the work) seemed to go to dance-music all day long. Later on, however, there began to be signs of a change. One by one and in little groups all the cattle had come in of their own accord from the distant ranges. Some of them had been feeding above the foot-hills on the sweet grass of the mountain slopes, where in two months' time even the bighorn would not be able to exist. As Snap rode out to shoot for the pot, or on any work about the ranche, he would meet fresh companies of them, feeding slowly downhill towards the low land and the river bottoms. They were in no hurry, picking the tenderest 'feed' as they strolled along, and camping every night wherever they happened to find themselves, but still pressing steadily on to the warmer lands below. As the beasts stopped and stared at the boy with great, solemn, brown eyes of inquiry, he used to wonder at them at least as much as they at him. How came it, he thought, that they knew the bitter white winter was coming, although the sun was still so bright, and the uplands flooded with golden light? Who told them? or did they remember from the years before?
Nature, too, had put on her last robe but one. In a month, save for the dark green of the funereal pines, it would be white everywhere. Now, just for a season, there was colour everywhere as bright as rainbow tints, and as short-lived. The maples were clear gold or vivid crimson; the sugar maples often showing both colours side by side in one gracefully pointed leaf. The hazels were red and gold, or, like the long oval leaves of the sumach-bush, had already turned from brilliant lake to a dull, blackish purple. They were all ready to drop and die, but their death would be as beautiful and becoming as their birth in spring-time, when birds were mating and woods a tender green, or as their life among the flowers and cool, green shadows of the luxurious summer.
As Snap lay awake at night he heard far up among the stars the clang, it seemed to him, of trumpets, as if an army passed by to battle; or, again, a strange, solemn cry, not from quite such a height, smote his ear: 'honk, honk, ha, ha,' it seemed to say—a strange, unearthly call, from things passing and unseen.
At morning, too, before dawn, he heard these cries, and a strange, swift, whistling sound would rush over the roof of the log-house. The sky seemed haunted in these late autumn days. One morning as the mists rose Snap got a glimpse of these passing armies of the air. Far away up in the clouds was a great V-shaped body of birds, the point of the V a single swan cleaving his way westward from his summer haunts in the Arctic Circle to the warmer regions of British Columbia and the mud-flats of the mouth of the Frazer River. On other days he saw Canada geese in thousands, and snow geese (or wavies) in hundreds of thousands, all passing on the same great high-road from Hudson Bay to the West.
'Snap,' said old Wharton one morning, 'hurry up, I've just seen a gang of wavies go up the crik, flying pretty low down. I reckon they aren't going far, and young wavy is mighty good eating.'
Snap was not long getting the big duck-gun down from its peg on the beam, nor long in loading it with a great charge of shot as big as small peas.
'It ain't like shooting quail, you see,' said Wharton, 'these wavies want almost as much killing as a grizzly.'
'What are you going to take, Dick?' asked Snap.
'Oh, I'll just take the Winchester,' replied his friend; 'you let me have the first cut at them with a ball, and then as they get up let 'em have both barrels of your blunderbuss right in the thick of them.'
'All right, come along,' urged Snap.
'No hurry, my boy; they have come a longish way, those wavies, and I guess they'll take a goodish time lunching on them mud-flats and beaver meadows,' replied his less excitable companion, whose eyes nevertheless gleamed with all the excitement of a genuine wild-fowler.
By-and-by, as the two hurried down the river-bed, they could hear a loud and excited gabbling, a thousand geese all talking at once.
'Talking like senators,' muttered old Dick; 'one would think they were paid for the job, but I expect as they've seen some country to talk about in the last day or two, between this and Hudson.'
'Last two or three days! why, how fast do they fly, Dick?' whispered Snap.
'Wal,' replied he, 'I guess I never travelled with them much, but I should say about sixty miles more or less an hour, and they'll keep it up too; but dry up now, for the cunning varmint put out regular scouts, and they'll hear us talking a quarter of a mile off.'
Round the mud-flats and hollows which the geese were on was a fringe of brush and reeds. Through this the two gunners forced their way. As they did so the gabbling ceased as if by magic.
'Quick, quick,' whispered Wharton, pressing forward, and as they reached the edge Snap caught a glimpse of a huge bunch of geese, all drawn together on a little bare island in the stream, their long necks stretched to the utmost, their whole attitude one of suspicion and anxiety, and the wings of one or two of them half lifted for flight. Old Dick's rifle rang out the signal for them to go—all but two, that is to say—for the old man's bullet stopped the wanderings of two of them for ever. As they rose in a cloud Snap clapped the big gun to his shoulder and let drive amongst them.
'Not bad, my boy,' cried Wharton, 'but why in thunder don't you shoot again? Hulloa! well, I am sugared, ha, ha, ha!' laughed the old man as, turning round, he saw Snap slowly picking himself up out of a mud-hole in which he had lately lain full length. 'Why, does that gun kick,' continued Wharton, 'or what's the matter? How much had it in it, I wonder?'
'Well,' replied Snap, 'I put about three and a half drams of powder and a good lot of shot into it, but I've fired as big a charge before at home.'
'You put a charge in, did you?' asked Dick; 'then that explains it, because I put one in too when you went back into the house for caps. I didn't know as you'd loaded her. No wonder she kicked; the wonder is that she didn't bust.'
Remembering the charge which he had put in for the benefit of the geese, Snap quite agreed with his friend, and, rubbing his shoulder somewhat ruefully, proceeded to collect the dead. Five geese lay outstretched on the mud island, one with his head cut clean off by Wharton's bullet, and another knocked into a cocked hat by the same missile. Three were Snap's birds, and three or four more 'winged' ones were scattered about on the stream and river-banks.
Having retrieved these, they turned home, well loaded and highly pleased with themselves. On the way back Snap noticed two more geese floating down with the stream, close under the bank. In spite of the kick he had received from his gun at the last discharge, Snap could not resist the temptation to bag another brace, and was creeping up for a shot when Wharton stopped him with:
'Hold hard, you've shot them birds once; they are both winged birds, and if we can catch 'em alive they will be worth a lot to us.'
It was soon evident that Wharton was right, for, though the geese saw their enemies and tried to hide their heads under the opposite bank, they could not rise from the water. And then began a chase which wore out Dick's temper and Snap's wind before it was over. Although the men plunged into the water, and kept both sides of the stream guarded, they couldn't for the life of them get hold of the wily ganders, who flapped and swam, dodging cleverly, or hissing with outstretched necks and angry yellow eyes, unceasingly. When they had caught them at last it was late in the afternoon, and by the time they had gone back to fetch the dead geese which they had abandoned during the chase, and walked with them to the ranche, it was already getting dark. As they left the river a whistling sound overhead made them look up.
'More geese,' said Wharton: 'I guess they're making for them mud-flats too—please the pigs, we'll have a good time to-morrow evening.'
And so they had for a good many evenings, the two winged geese being used as decoys, and Snap and Wharton (the latter now armed with a gun) being hidden carefully in reedy ambushes hard by. It was intensely exciting work, sitting there waiting until one of the many legions of birds which passed incessantly overhead lowered to the water on which the decoy sat. At first Snap could make nothing of the shooting, and, to tell the truth, Wharton was not a bit better. He wasn't used, he said, 'to these blessed scatter-guns,' which 'weren't of no account alongside of a rifle.' If a single duck came along, Snap never hit it. If a long string passed over him, and he fired at the leading bird, sometimes nothing happened, but oftener the fourth or fifth bird, at an interval of several yards, came down with a thump, gratifying to the pot-hunter, but not complimentary to the young gunner, who felt that he had missed his mark by as many yards as there were birds in front of the one which he bagged. After a good deal of practice he began to learn not only how far to shoot in front of the swift-flying birds, but how to swing with them,i.e.to keep his gun moving as he fired. Being younger than Wharton, and having shot a little at home, he soon learnt to beat the old man, who, if he could possibly help it, would not waste powder on a flying shot at all.
What most astonished Snap in this wonderful migration was that all the birds killed in the first day or two were young birds. Later on, flocks of old ones began to arrive, but all the advance guard, as it were, of the bird army, whether wavies or brent, swans or duck, were birds of that season only; birds who had never, could never, have travelled that road before. 'It is wonderful enough,' thought Snap, 'to see the cattle all come wandering in with no one to drive them from the pastures, which will soon be all snow and ice; it is wonderful that the birds should know that winter is coming, and be able to find their way from the bleak, frost-bound north to the more genial climates in which they winter; but that the bird-babies, born this summer only, should lead the way, is most wonderful of all. They can't remember! Who is it who leads them?' And, so thinking, the boy lay down to rest, and the loud clanging of the swans, and the call of the geese, and sharp whistling of the ducks' wings all told the same story, and if even a sparrow can't fall to the ground without His knowing, Snap thought he didn't fear the future so long as the One who guided the swans through the night and the darkness would guide him too.